


Valentine On A Broken Man

by Trawler



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal, Cappella Palatina, Choking, First Time, Il Mostro, Italy, Kissing, M/M, Murder Husbands, Palermo, Season 3, Strangling, Virgin!Will, dark side, norman chapel, virgin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:41:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24375940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trawler/pseuds/Trawler
Summary: Will Graham's recovered memory - or vivid hallucination, perhaps - has drawn him to the Cappella Palatina in Palermo, a beautiful Norman-era chapel bedaubed with the finest architecture and artistry of the time. There he sees Il Mostro's latest work, a torso-sized heart constructed from the broken corpse of a man.Will knows that Hannibal left this here for him to see. After his conversation with Inspector Pazzi in the catacombs, he doesn't know what his response will be when he finally catches up to Hannibal, but he doesn't expect to see him here in Palermo.But when Hannibal finally decides to reveal himself, his declaration is not one that Will expected. The offer to go away with him still stands. And not just to go with him... but to be with him.This is a complete one-shot.
Relationships: Will Graham & Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 138





	Valentine On A Broken Man

**Author's Note:**

> No blood and gore, but references to stabbing and blood. Also, strangling. You have been warned.  
> But this is a Hannibal fic, so I doubt you need a warning.

VALENTINE ON A BROKEN MAN

THEN

_I entered the catacombs, making my way through a series of tunnels carved into the bedrock of Palermo. It was cold down here, cold and dry and enclosing, my journey lit only by candles. I passed between islands of light. Was I the angler, setting the lure of my presence for Hannibal to follow? Or was I the fish? Not walking but swimming, flicking my invisible tail across oceans of darkness? Waiting for the bright, sharp blade of his spear to impale me, to drag me out of this dark place and into the beautiful, terrible light?_

_The scuff of boots on stone was unnaturally loud to my ears. Even my breathing sounded like a bellows. I knew Inspector Pazzi was following – the man was making little effort to be quiet, though I was sure he thought otherwise – but he might as well have been in another country. Or another time._

_I wandered past deep sconces populated by the dried, desiccated corpses of human beings. Saints or sinners? Their presence in a house of God suggested the former, but my experience of behaviour suggested the latter. He worked in mysterious ways, so it seemed, but those ways became less mysterious upon the application of large sums of money._

_I stopped at an intersection. Left or right? Straight on? I felt cut off from reality. The catacombs imposed a reality of their own. I could swim here for hours._

_“Hannibal,” I called into the silence. It echoed, the sound stolen away._

_I passed more desiccated bodies, this time proudly on display between doorways. The irony amused me; here they were, these great, notable figures of old. Perhaps they had paid their dues for eternal life. Perhaps they genuinely had performed worthy tasks. But this wasn’t the eternal life at God’s side they had envisaged. This was servitude in a barely lit maze, a labyrinthine hall of the dead whose only purpose was to frighten the tourists. Mysterious ways, for sure._

_A figure loomed out of the shadows. Pazzi._

_“You shouldn’t be down here alone,” I said._

_His slow smile was one of dark amusement. “I’m not alone. I’m with you.”_

_My turn to smile. “You don’t know whose side I’m on.”_

_“What are you going to do when you find him, your Il Mostro?”_

_“I'm curious about that myself.” I couldn’t seem to stop the grin, though my cheek muscles began to hurt._

_“You and I carry the dead with us, Signor Graham. We both need to unburden.”_

_I almost scoffed. As if this flat-footed policeman could compare his experiences to mine. Even as a young man Hannibal had been a skilled predator. Now, as a seasoned veteran, he wouldn’t just hunt Pazzi – he would turn his death into a work of art._

_“Why don’t you carry your dead back to the chapel, before you count yourself among them?” It was supposed to be a warning. It sounded more like a threat._

_“You are already dead, aren't you?” Pazzi asked._

_I stepped back, fading into the darkness._

_“Buonanotte, commendatorre.” I wouldn’t answer his question… because it was true._

_~*~_

_I tried to find my way out. Hannibal was here – I could feel him, feel the way his watchful presence seeped into the very stone of the catacombs – but I also knew he had no intention of revealing himself._

_But as I searched, I also got a sense of… movement. Watchful anticipation. I was well aware I could be reading too much into a simple change of air currents, but as my quarry understood every facet of my psyche, so, too, had I come to understand him. He was here. He’d wanted me to observe his sculpture in the chapel above, and he’d wanted to observe me as I saw it._

_He hadn’t intended to reveal himself to me here. Yet I sensed a hesitation to leave. A yearning to reach out to the one person who had seen his dark places. I realised I could be projecting my emotions – was almost certainly doing so, in fact – but…_

_“Hannibal,” I called into the shifting shadows._

_My imagination pictured him: silent and still. Listening._

_“I forgive you,” I said._

_The church bell tolled._

_~*~_

NOW

Quite what, exactly, I had forgiven him for was open to debate, and I fully debated with myself as I finally found the exit. 

Rising back into the light was something of an epiphany. I left the Cappella Palatina and wandered the streets of Palermo. The buildings were beautiful; white-walled, red-roofed, worn with time yet losing none of their character.

Hannibal had asked for forgiveness, the night he’d stabbed me and killed Abigail. I understood that he was completing a cycle he’d set in motion with a simple courtesy call – one ‘professional’ to another – in effect, trying to correct his own mistake. When he’d called Garret Jacob Hobbs he’d had no idea the man had a daughter. In his mind, it was an act of inconsideration. A lack of planning or, perhaps, foresight. Borderline rude.

And rudeness, as we had all come to learn, was not to be tolerated. 

Abigail should have died that morning in the kitchen. So, too, should I. My wild shots had found their mark. In another world, Hobbs would have gutted me like a deer before any of my bullets had found their mark. Abigail and I would have bled out on the worn linoleum floor instead of him.

Hannibal’s final stand had layers of meaning. I had spent hours in my hospital bed taking those layers apart, feeling the throb and burn of my healing wound. The stab designed to let me bleed out rather than damage any internal organs. He was redressing the balance in his own way. If I had died in the Hobbs’ kitchen, he would not have come to trust me enough that my betrayal could hurt him. It was punishment and redress in one swift, elegant act.

I considered my next move as I walked. Should I go back to my hotel, or continue wandering until inspiration struck? The prospect of returning to the States left me feeling… hollow – 

“Not all who wander are lost,” Hannibal said.

He stood in an alley, leaning against one white wall, hands in the pockets of his lightweight suit. He seemed a pale ghost, either here to haunt me or… what? Perhaps _I_ was the ghost, haunting the fringes of his life, desperate to be let back in. I couldn’t deny that a wealth of emotion rose in my throat when I saw him. I couldn’t identify all of those emotions – much less control the way my pulse raced, or the way my breathing increased – but none of them seemed inclined to make me run from him. The triumph of hope over expectation, perhaps. 

“The old that is strong does not wither,” I answered. “I never much cared for Tolkien.”

“No? The tale of good defeating evil?”

He seemed just as relaxed as I recalled. Unfazed by his flight from Baltimore, unworn by setting up a new life in Italy. The departure may not have been his design, but his life here… whatever it was… it would be the life he wished to live. 

“Tales of dark versus light are always bland,” I replied. “The reality is that there is no triumph of one over the other. There are shades of grey. Light bleeds into dark, and vice versa.”

“Shades of grey.” His lips twitched. “Fifty of them, so the ‘literature’ would have us believe.”

“You read _that?_ ” Despite the seriousness of our meeting – the sheer unexpectedness of it – I couldn’t control my incredulity. 

“I did. It was terrible. I kept waiting for the main characters to murder each other out of sheer boredom.”

I laughed, then stopped, guilt gnawing at my stomach. The street was deserted. There was no one to witness our conversation. 

“It is good to see you again, Will.”

I believed him. There was a warmth to his eyes he rarely let anyone see. He had expected me to bleed out… but was glad that I hadn’t. 

“Likewise,” I replied, and meant it.

A short, expectant silence fell between us. We had never exchanged banal pleasantries, never had a conversation that wasn’t full of meaning. I had no need to scream ‘Why did you stab me?’ in his face. We both understood why.

“I have often wondered how you felt that night,” he said eventually, when the silence stretched a little too long. “After I slid my knife inside you.”

“It was... intimate,” I replied, choosing to continue the theme his words had evoked. “An act of intimacy, though one born from violence rather than affection.”

“I feel affection for you. You are my friend. Your betrayal wounded me and had to be punished, but it was the punishment a parent gives to a child. A lesson you will not soon forget, I think.”

“A parent to a child?” I didn’t care for his analogy, and the way he smiled at my raised eyebrow told me he knew. “More like a lover’s quarrel. The thrusting knife a physical interpretation of inner passion.”

“Is that what we are now?” He seemed mildly interested by the idea. “Friends who will become lovers? Passion is not just a prerequisite of lovers: - artists, writers, chefs...”

“Lovers in all but the act.” He had a talent for each of those things, but I was allowing my thoughts to drift in other directions. “You showed me your heart.”

“A Valentine written on a broken man.” His face, now, was unreadable. 

“I broke your heart,” I acknowledged. “The way you broke mine. We betrayed each other’s trust.”

“You tried to kill me. I tried to kill you. We are equal.”

I was stunned by the sheer honesty of his words. Hannibal was a man who considered no one his equal.

“Equal in stature, or merely in act?”

“In stature, of course.” He moved off the wall, keeping his hands in his pockets, the picture of a relaxed, urbane man. He could have a switchblade in his pocket, but I doubted it. He would have killed me in the catacombs if that was his intention. “Did you believe you could change me, the way I changed you?”

“I already did.” 

Hannibal had been both the catalyst and the tool of my transformation, the cause of my emergence from the chrysalis of social anxiety (the most convenient label, if not wholly inaccurate) to my new form. My true form. My wings had taken time to dry – were still drying, perhaps – yet when I spread them, I cast a shadow. 

But the mirror was two-way. Standing with one foot in his world had encouraged him to stand with one foot in mine. His transformation, while less obvious, was no less dramatic; he’d touched my empathy and in turn been touched by it. No longer a creature alone in the world, a panther prowling in the depths of the jungle: - he was a lion, seeking a pride of his own. Abigail was lost, beyond even his reach, but I was still here. Right... here.

He made no comment to my statement. But his eyes flickered. Whether that signalled agreement, I couldn’t tell.

“I followed you across the world,” I said, trying again to strengthen our connection. “I think – I hope – I have a comfortable place inside the palace of your mind.”

“I have whole rooms devoted to you. An entire wing. They are... exquisite.”

“I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”

“Oh, believe me, it is.”

I should tackle him to the ground. Beat him, though he would likely overcome me. At least call for help. But my curiosity was piqued. In this case it was entirely possible that curiosity wouldn’t just kill the cat, it would get it eaten, too. 

“The word “exquisite” is an adjective,” I said. “An intensifier. By itself, it means nothing. It requires... context.”

“Do you feel that you require context?”

“I’ve come to believe that you provide me with _a_ context,” I explained. “But that’s the thing with context – it changes. Beauty... music... pain.”

I’d missed this. Our back-and-forth, question and answer. Or sometimes question and question. The probing. Like it or not – and mostly, I did _not_ like – Hannibal had helped me explore all my dark corners. 

“And pleasure,” he added. “You bring all of those things into my mind palace.”

I stared at him. He returned my attention with a study of his own. We were still alone in the cobbled street, though how long that would last I had no way of knowing. 

“It seems we are at a crossroads,” he remarked, arms spread wide. “Let me go, or come with me.”

“There is a third option.” My heart was beating too fast. My breath was starting to run away from me. Fear – excitement – by this point I had trouble differentiating between the two. “I could kill you.”

“You could certainly try.” He let his arms fall back to his sides. “You could attack me right here. Your physical stature is shorter than mine, though you are broader at the shoulder and possess a gratifying quantity of muscle. It is possible you could incapacitate me before I killed you.” He took a few steps, slowly circling. I turned to follow him. “Tell me, how would you do it? Smash my head against the wall of this alley?”

“That would the speediest way,” I agreed, keeping my eyes on him. I watched his shoulders, his hips, looking for slight movements that could indicate he was about to lunge. “But you deserve a more personal touch. I… I would choke you, if I could.” I pictured it so clearly in my mind’s eye. “My hands on your throat. It could be the act of a lover.” Yes, that fit perfectly with the analogy he was pushing. 

“Why not make that fantasy a reality?” 

“A fantasy of death?” I had spent months in the hospital trying _not_ to die.

“A fantasy of the possibility of death.”

He wasn’t just asking me to come with him. He was asking me to be with him. 

Could I do that?

Silence stretched between us. He remained silent, giving me the courtesy of time to think. That was one thing that marked him apart from everyone else. He was courteous to the end, especially if that end was yours. 

Questions of morality crossed my mind. I dismissed them, almost angry with myself; morality was a construct of the masses, a shared psychosis that glued the disparate pieces of society into a functioning whole. Hannibal paid lip service to this construct while living within a structure of his own devising. 

So, too, did I. My career as a profiler was built on examining the morality (however stretched that word might be) of serial killers. To step into their worlds, I had to step out of mine. I supposed my world – my framework of morality, of reality, subjectivity and objectivity – was so much bigger than theirs. The way I saw things now, the way I perceived this mortal tread, was so vast that perspective had almost become irrelevant. I understood that Hannibal saw things in this way, too. His macrocosm of awareness, though similar to mine in places, was distinct. There were places we were separate.

And there were places we were the same.

I had no doubt that if I chose to be with him, my life – or his – would be shorter. I also knew that if we remained apart, those lives would be... well, not devoid of colour (we were both able to create our own tableaux of stunning hues, of deep complexities) but devoid of purpose. And that purpose would be finding all the places our macrocosms diverged, and bringing them closer together.

I closed my eyes. Tilted my face to the sun. I could feel it happening, even now, before I’d made my decision; a shivering in the fabric of my reality, a yearning to move back into his orbit.

“I think,” I said as I opened my eyes, picking my words with slow care, “I would like that.”

~*~

We strolled through the quiet streets of Palermo. No one disturbed us. For the time being we were alone, just two people enjoying the air. The illusion would last only as long as it took to reach a busy intersection, but we took our time.

Strangely enough, the illusion held. I followed Hannibal to a small house in a row of them, another white-walled property with a sloping, red-tiled roof, sitting near the top of a hill. 

“We can stay here for a time, if you’d like,” he said as we entered the building. “Or you can return with me to Florence.”

The house was beautiful. The hallway, though short and compact, had a high ceiling. The walls were a soft shade of duck-egg blue, the singular colour broken only by clean white dado rails and coving. I followed Hannibal into a receiving room. The chaise longue and two armchairs were upholstered in some light, bright fabric. The windows were tall, with rounded edges and floor-to-ceiling curtains, while the walls were magnolia with a hint of gold. A gilt-edged frame hung between two windows.

The first creeping seeds of doubt sprouted in my mind. It wasn’t too late to leave. I could end this – in any number of different ways, I could end this – but I would know, forever, that I had denied a part of my nature. That I had closed the door on the possibility of experience, just because the smothering blanket of societal morality dared to encroach upon my own glittering web of perspective. No. No more. I wouldn’t let myself be afraid... at least, not of things that had no place in my life.

It was right to be afraid of Hannibal, or at least wary. Curious. Hungry. Excited... oh, yes, I was definitely excited by the possibilities. The thrill of sharing his macrocosm. Of overlaying it with mine, and mine with his. 

“What are you thinking?” he asked, lips tilting in that half-smile I’d grown so familiar with. The smile that could have been encouragement, or condescension, or genuine pleasure in the conversation. With him, perhaps, it could be all three. 

“You always seem a step ahead of the chase,” I replied. “So I’m curious. Does our future involve Dr. Du Maurier?” She had been reported missing, but I’d always doubted her death. Hannibal found her too interesting to kill quickly. “Are we to share one home, or will you take a lover in every town?”

“Jealous?”

“I won’t share. I’ll have all of you, or none.”

“So bold, to be making declarations.”

“Declarations?” I shook my head. “More like ground rules.” 

“Bedelia has been my companion only. I owe her nothing. Should you choose to stay with me, I will see that she is taken care of.”

“When you say it, the statement sounds… ominous.”

“I want to find peace, Will. I believe I can find that with you. Up until today I had planned for the possibility of your presence, hoping you would see my work in the Cappella Palatina and know my intentions.” He shook his head in self-deprecation. “A passing fancy, if you will. The wish of a lonely man.”

“I don’t believe that you are ever lonely. Not when you can stroll through such magnificent galleries in your mind palace.”

His smile deepened. Wavered. Fell. For a moment, I saw a sadness in his eyes that I’d never seen before. A true emotion. 

“A man can have all the comforts of life and yet still crave contact with one who understands him.” He reached out to cup my face. The warmth of his skin seeped through my stubble. 

“But my understanding of you is not yet complete.” My pulse was racing yet again. 

“I want it to be.” He moved his hand from my cheek to brush a finger over the bridge of my nose, flicking the upturned collar of my jacket. It was a surprisingly playful gesture. “No glasses?”

“Contacts. And… we don’t always get what we want.”

What was I saying? Why had I come here, if I was about to deny him? _Was_ I about to deny him?

“What _I_ want...” His inhalation was slow as he savoured the nuances of my scent. “I want to see again the way light shines as your blood trickles down the blade of a knife. I want to see the imprint of my hands around your throat.” As if to illustrate his point, he reached up to clasp my neck. His thumb brushed a tender spot below my ear, making my eyes flutter. “I want to see the look on your face as you give yourself to me. I want to own the peak of your pleasure. I want to see as you understand that it was _me_ who brought you to that point.”

I heard air whistling through my nose. I wasn’t struggling to breathe – I was held by a touch, not a grip – but his words resonated. 

“I want you to devour me,” I said. “And I want to devour you. Catholics eat the body of Christ as a form of worship…” I let out a shaky laugh. “Is that what we’re doing? Worshipping each other?”

His smile was soft. Pleased. Excited. “There is more than one way to devour a man.” His voice had dropped to a low, enticing whisper. “Shall we see which excites you most?”

~*~

The bedroom seemed in keeping with what I had seen so far of the rest of the house – light walls, high windows, clean lines. A four-poster bed with linen and curtains in the same gold-hued fabric as the chaise longue. I had no idea whether the building was owned, rented, borrowed or stolen, but Hannibal’s aesthetics were easy to spot. 

“I would like to watch you undress,” he said, sitting on the end of the bed with one leg crossed over the other. So very elegant. 

“Will you return the favour?”

He smiled. “Of course.”

I unbuttoned my jacket. My hands trembled. Fear, or excitement? I could no longer tell which emotion was dominant. The fear of being excited? The excitement of being afraid?

“Have you made love with a man before, Will?”

His tone was one of mild curiosity, and I had to remind myself: - I had always interested him. That wasn’t the same as friendship, though I supposed we were friends of a kind. The kind who decided that a stab to the guts was a declaration of love. We were more than friends, and less. 

“I’ve barely made love to a woman before,” I admitted. “So, no.” I slipped the jacket off my shoulders, catching it before it could drop. Hannibal stood and took it. I seized the hem of my T-shirt in both hands, pulling it off in one swift movement. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, perhaps.

“You seem defensive.” He took the T-shirt, draping both garments over the back of a chair. “Please do not feel you have to defend yourself around me.” 

I raised my eyebrows, self-consciously covering my scar with both arms. “Not even in a literal sense?”

His laugh eased my fear, even though I knew it should have the opposite effect. 

“Always in a literal sense.” He reached for me with both hands, fingertips barely touching the inward curve of flesh between hips and ribs. I shivered. “But I will not judge your sexual history, as you will not judge mine. At one time or another we have both experienced the difficulties of being around other people.”

The brief mention of his past caught my attention. I wondered if he would one day allow me deeper into his mind palace, to experience the events that had shaped him, to view them through his eyes. I wondered if I would live that long.

I wondered if he would live that long. 

“I don’t find it difficult to be around you,” I said, dropping my arms. 

“I am glad to hear that.” 

He slid his right arm slid around my waist. His proximity was disarming and alarming in equal measure. I couldn’t quell the mad pounding of my heart, nor calm my rapid breath; the last time we had been this close – in fact, the last time he had held me this way – was after he’d stuck several inches of steel into my abdomen. 

I felt the slow trace of his fingertips over my scar. It was an oddly erotic sensation. He had created this mark, left his calling-card on my skin so that even if I’d lived, I would never forget him.

His eyes were half-lidded. His pupils were wide and black. 

“How did _you_ feel that night?” I coaxed. I couldn’t look away from his gaze. “Not your emotions before you stabbed me, or after. How did it feel... in the _act?_ ”

His eyes closed. His arm tightened. We were inches apart, his breath fanning my face. 

“There is a moment of resistance,” he said. “Of waiting. I have drawn that moment out many times in my head, elongating it into a lifetime. In many ways, it _is_ a lifetime... or the end of one.” His eyes opened. They bored into mine, full of hungry intent. “When the blade finally pierces the skin, the moment of waiting explodes into ecstasy. That is what I felt when I stabbed you, Will.”

I swallowed hard. “A moment of ecstasy.” The inches between us were closing.

“I do not elongate your moment as I do with others. I keep it safe, only to be enjoyed on the rarest of occasions. Like the finest of wines.”

His lips touched mine. Only Hannibal could make a violent act sound like a seduction. But I was already seduced; as the tip of his tongue flicked over my top lip, I opened to his gentle ministration. 

It was the first time I had kissed a man. He was taller than me, so I had to angle my head up. His lips were smooth, his tongue warm and moist as it sought my own. I settled into his kiss and, just as I felt ready to deepen it – to give in to my own hungry urges – he pulled back. I reached for him, then let my hands drop.

“This is another moment of waiting.” His voice was low and rough, somewhat unsteady. I liked that I had been able to destabilise his constant facade of control. “But I cannot wait long. Please finish undressing.”

I smiled. It would have been the work of a few seconds to remove my remaining clothes, but I took my time. Not a tease in the conventional sense; but, still, a tease. 

Finally I stood naked in front of him. I didn’t feel self-conscious, at least not in the way of feeling embarrassment at displaying my body – rather, I was conscious of my self, of body and mind fully on display to a clearly appreciative pair of eyes. He studied me as he would study a piece of fine art. 

I watched as he undressed. Like me, he took his time, letting me grow accustomed to each new area of exposed flesh before he moved on. Beneath his suit, his body was well-toned, lines of lean muscle usually concealed under finely tailored garments. A light covering of hair on his chest, very different to mine: - his skin was a light tan, his hair almost the same colour, while my skin was pale, the hair on my chest darker and thicker. I wanted to touch him. Explore our differences. I wanted him to touch me again.

We moved as one, closing the gap between us as if our thoughts were a mirror. His kiss was rough, his possession clear, though I also had the sense he was trying to hold back. That he was controlling his reactions, his instincts, for my sake. 

I bit his lip. Not hard enough to draw blood, not even enough to break the skin, but to let him know that he didn’t have to control himself right now. Around me, I wanted him to be no one other than who he was.

We were both breathing hard, both aroused. His eyes burned. Did mine look the same?

“You play a dangerous game,” he growled. There was no pretence now of his urbane exterior. The man who stared back at me was a predator. 

“Life is a dangerous game,” I murmured. “And yet we both play.”

He kissed me again, hand splaying over the back of my head. I wrapped my arms around him, pressed my body to his. His erection dug into my stomach. The sensation was strange and yet so very desired. We moved toward the bed, him pulling, me pushing. No wild tumble for us – his hands moved to mine, sliding along my arms from shoulder to wrists, as he lay me down. I dug my shoulder blades into the thick blanket as I wriggled up the bed, luxuriating in the soft cotton on my bare skin.

“You are a picture,” he murmured, voice thick with lust as he stared at me. “As sensuous as any of Botticelli’s nymphs. As appetising as a five-star Michelin meal.”

“Both are a feast.” I folded my arms behind my head, feeling bold in the face of his desire. This was his doing – this new understanding of myself, of my place within his world. Of his place within mine. Even if we parted ways, never again to meet, I would always recall the confidence he had coaxed out of me. 

He knelt on the end corner of the bed, knee-walking to my side. I watched him with lazy eyes. His fingers grazed my calf, trailing along my leg before closing over my thigh. 

“Weighing up whether it would make a decent cut of meat?” I taunted.

“Every part of you would make a decent cut of meat. I would waste no part of you. To do so would be… discourteous.” 

He was mimicking words spoken to us by Abigail. I’d mourned her loss, mourned that she’d ever been drawn into the circle of our influence. Us, her shiny, terrible, adoptive parents. We had made one glorious, awful family.

“I would hate to go to waste.” He wasn’t the only mimic. 

“That is why I will keep you for myself.” His fingers trailed higher, exploring the ridge at the edge of my abdominal muscles. Tracing my scar. I ached for a more intimate touch – for the curl of those talented fingers around my cock – but I understood that this was as much a tease for himself as for me. I closed my eyes.

His fingers moved over my belly. Up the line of my sternum. Across first one collarbone, then the other, the light press of his lips following each caress. I strained to remain still. When he took hold of my wrists, pulling my hands out from behind my head, I opened my eyes and drank in the spectacle of his arousal. Kneeling over me, he was magnificent – if I was his nymph, then he was my artist. In many ways we were equals, but in this… ah, I was his oh-so-willing student. 

He stretched out beside me, encouraging me to face him. I leaned in to his kiss, silently demanding what I had so quickly come to expect, and he did not disappoint. His tongue ravaged my mouth, the hard grip of his hand on my shoulder almost certainly enough to leave imprints in my skin, should I care to look. But now it was my turn to explore. To trace my fingers over the angles and lines of his body. So different to a woman, yet still equally exciting. No firm, round breasts to captivate my attention, but two nipples just the same, rising to a stiff point as I brushed my thumb over each. His sharp intake of breath was satisfying. 

But two, it seemed, could play at that game, and while he seemed content to let me explore, he would not let me lead. With a sharp push I was on my back and his mouth was on my stomach. I felt a wild stab of fear – did he mean to bite me? Did he mean to rip me open and gorge on my blood-slick organs? Orcas off the coast of South Africa were known to attack sharks, feasting on their fat-rich livers and leaving the rest of the carcass for scavengers. But orcas were pack animals, and Hannibal, while he had drawn _me_ into his circle, was definitely a lone hunter. My habit of taking in stray dogs had landed me not with a homeless canine, in need of a bath and a decent meal, but a prowling, confident, well-fed lion –

The brief sting of teeth shocked me out of my introspection. He _had_ bitten me, but no more than a nip above my belly button, a nip he rapidly soothed with the swipe of his tongue. My fingers clenched in the blanket. Another sensation – the pull of flesh as he sucked a round circle of skin into his mouth. A love-bite? Yes, and no. A mark of ownership, like my scar but less cruel. A kind of brand. Temporary, yet lasting long enough. Would he allow me to mark him in this way? For as I belonged to him in this moment, so too did he belong to me. 

“You like that?” he asked, raising his head to look at me.

“You’re hungry,” I said. 

“Ravenous.” His hands closed over mine, feeling the clench of my fingers, squeezing down harder. He leaned forward again. I anticipated another bite, braced myself against the sting, but no further bite was forthcoming. Instead he sucked one of my nipples into his mouth.

The sensation was so unexpected that I cried out. When he started to suckle like a hungry infant, the cry turned to a low moan, reverberating up through my throat and spilling out past my lips. When he switched to my other nipple, the sensation of cool air on my saliva-moist skin was enough to harden it further. The sting of his teeth made my back arch, made the moan stick in my throat until, with an explosive release, it came forth.

I felt his chuckle through my ribs. “You are expressive with your pleasure,” he said. “I like that. It is gratifying to know that my efforts are appreciated.”

“One need only look at a certain part of my anatomy to know that your efforts are appreciated,” I croaked. Dutifully, he looked at my erection. 

“An attentive lover must pay homage to all parts of their partner’s anatomy,” he said. 

Finally – _finally_ – his hand curled around my cock. My hips twitched in slavish response. He stroked me with slow, sure movements that made me hiss and grip the blanket again. He watched my face. His touch was too intense; I was too sensitive, about to beg him to stop, but it must have shown on my face. He paused to reach across to the night-stand. Panting, I let my head drop back.

I heard the click of a bottle being opened. When his touch returned it was slick with lube. He had adjusted his grip, his thumb brushing over the head of my cock before he ran the pad over the underside. Combined with the steady up and down glide, I felt a dizzying rush of pleasure.

“This is better for you?”

“Yes. Yes.” I loved his solicitousness. For a moment I imagined he was this courteous with his victims. I knew he killed only those he found rude, or for his own self-defence, but he would not repeat the discourtesy that had been shown to him.

“A little is just enough,” he murmured. “Turn over, please.”

“Don’t stop.” I wasn’t one to beg, but it seemed appropriate. 

His rich chuckle told me the effort hadn’t been wasted. “I could spend many hours like this,” he explained. “Bringing you to the very edge of orgasm over and over again. Listening as you beg for release. But that is a pleasure for another time.”

“Would _you_ beg?” I rasped, obediently rolling onto my stomach. My cock pressed against the blanket, no doubt leaving a wet spot. Would he consider that rude? Surely not, or he wouldn’t have asked it of me. “If our roles were reversed, and I had you in my hand?” I half-looked over my shoulder so that I could see his face.

“Have no doubt that I would.” I watched as his eyes moved down over my shoulders, following the dip in my back before rising over the swell of my ass. “And have no doubt that I will, when the situation calls for it.”

The image of him at my mercy – bound at the wrists, perhaps – was intoxicating. Hannibal was a man who rarely ceded control in any aspect of his life, and I didn’t expect it to be different in the bedroom. That it could be different with me was an honour I would cherish.

Of course, promising something and acting on that promise were two different things. But I believed we knew each other too well to let a lie slide past unchallenged. 

“Paint me like one of your French girls,” I said, batting my eyelashes. 

“That film was atrocious.”

“But you did watch it.” 

He laughed. “I watch a great many things.”

I smiled until the glide of his hand across my ass turned the smile to a gasp.

“I would paint you with my tongue,” he murmured, draping his body over my legs. I felt the press of lips against the skin at my hip. The slow, unhurried path of his tongue. “I would learn every inch of your form, so that I could recreate it in blood.”

“ _My_ blood?” I felt long, strong fingers on each globe of my ass, easing them apart. I tried not to tense.

“Perhaps.”

Before I could reply – not that there was much I _could_ reply to a statement such as that – I felt the first touch of his lube-slick fingers. I shivered.

He worked a finger inside me. The sensation was… it was _alien,_ it was _other,_ but my _God,_ did it feel good. I understood what was happening on a practical level – that he had found my prostate, a gland involved in the male reproductive system – but on another level… the pleasure rippling along my spine might as well have been magic.

“I believe you can handle another.”

A second finger slid in beside the first. This time the feeling was different, the stretch becoming uncomfortable. But Hannibal found my prostate again, working his fingers inside me until I came to welcome the stretch. I moaned into the pillow.

“Do not hide your pleasure from me, Will.”

I turned my face, exposing my mouth, eye and nose. My fingers gripped the blanket. I ground against the mattress, the extra pressure on my cock – coupled with his fingers inside me – more than enough to make me feel wanton.

“Do you want more?” he asked, his tone measured. No hint of his own excitement, though judging from his erection he was just as aroused as me. “Or will this be enough? I could bring you to orgasm this way.”

“So clinical,” I gasped, looking back at him. He was still draped over me, supporting himself on his free arm. Though he looked composed, the deep rose in his lightly-tanned skin finally gave away his truth. “Do you ever just… talk dirty?”

He arched an eyebrow. “Would you like that?”

“I would like to hear it in _your_ voice.”

His fingers pressed deeper. I groaned.

“Do you want to come this way?” he asked. His voice had dropped. “Grinding helplessly against the mattress while I finger you?” He dug deeper still. I didn’t just groan, I cried out, head flying back so far the muscles in my neck twinged. “Or do you want me to fuck you?”

“Fuck me,” I growled, feeling a strange mixture of helplessness and power. Here I was, dependent on him, yet causing him pleasure with my reactions. I’d never felt this level of connection, this level of _understanding,_ during any of my fumbling explorations with women. But then, none of them had ever been like Hannibal.

He withdrew his fingers, then encouraged me to roll onto my back. My cock jutted up, a pale exclamation point against the rest of my sweat-slick body. I felt the warm dampness I’d left behind. Caught the scent of my own arousal. If it was strong enough that I could smell it, it must be bright as a beacon to Hannibal’s nose. The realisation was intoxicating. I would never truly be able to hide how I felt around this man.

He raised himself up on his knees, lifting my right leg and bracing it over his shoulder. He kissed the inside of my thigh. The muscle twitched. I brought my other leg up, bending it at the knee, waiting for the moment he would lift that, too. 

“I want to see your face as you come apart,” he murmured, reaching for the bottle of lube again. Another reach, and he was pulling a foil wrapper out of a box.

I watched in silence, anxiety mounting as he tore the foil, extracted the condom, and rolled it down over his cock. It was somewhat larger than his fingers. 

He drizzled more lube between my cheeks. It was cold.

“Never feel that you cannot say no to me.” His eyes met mine. “If you are not ready, we can stop. Or we can do something else. I have a fine meal planned.”

I couldn’t stop the half-smirk. “Am I to be a part of that meal, Hannibal? Guest, or entrée?”

He answered the smirk with one of his own. “That is yet to be decided.”

“I feel like a virgin,” I admitted. It was a relief to voice my anxiety, though I was sure he already understood this aspect of my thoughts. “In this, at least, I _am_ a virgin.”

“You feel like a blushing bride on her wedding night,” he added, turning his head to nuzzle my thigh. It was an unexpectedly tender gesture. “Knowing that she is soon to be deflowered, and hoping that her lover will prove gentle. Would it calm your anxiety to know that I feel the same way?”

“Yes,” I replied immediately. He was a man to whom confidence and self-assurance came easily; he manipulated situations to his own ends, even mine. The choice to come here – to put myself in this position now, on my back, legs spread and waiting for the first push of his cock inside me – had been my own, it was true, but it was he who planted the seeds of that choice.

He leaned forward and kissed me. 

“I want this,” I whispered against his mouth, threading my arms around his torso. “I want you. All of you.”

He deepened the kiss. When he pulled back, it was only so he could hook my other leg over his shoulders, tilting my hips to the angle he desired.

“Dante wrote that fear is almost as bitter as death,” he said.

“I am neither afraid... nor dead.”

I closed my eyes as he pushed inside me. The head of his cock seemed enormous, but he kept his movement slow and steady. I clenched my teeth through the first pain of penetration. The stretch turned to a burn. As he eased his way deeper, the burn intensified. 

“Will?”

“It hurts,” I admitted.

He kissed my forehead. “You have only to say the word and I will stop.”

I splayed my hands over his back, feeling the ripple of muscle. I opened my eyes, staring into his, losing myself in those olive-brown depths.

The seconds stretched out. He said nothing. I said nothing, adjusting to the new, shocking intimacy: - my legs over his shoulders, his hands cradling my face, arms braced beside my head. 

The slow, steady thrust of his hips finally stilled. He was as deep inside me as he could go… physically. But the mental penetration continued, a bond forged during our first meeting and enduring through all our mutual manipulations. We were inextricably bound. Good or bad, our future (however long or short that would be) was going to be spectacular. 

“Your eyes seem far away.” His voice was a rough croak, telling me that his self-control was slipping. 

“Looking through time,” I replied. Hannibal set my mind on fire, just as his hands set my body on fire now. 

“Don’t look so far that you forget to see me.”

I cupped his face in both hands. “I can’t forget.”

The burning pain had faded, replaced by something entirely different. A burn of a different kind. I rolled my hips, experimenting with the new sensation. Pleasure rippled through my body, snatching my breath and seeming to catch Hannibal unawares if the way his eyes rolled up was anything to go by. 

He set a slow pace. I felt he was playing me like an instrument, each stroke of his cock inside me like a bow over strings, the groans spilling from my throat the music we were both creating. _Concerto For Lovers,_ perhaps. _The Virgin Deflowered._

Coherent thought was becoming difficult. Coherent speech was out of the question, not even to beg for a return of his dirty mouth. We moved together in a sweet, beautiful, torture.

I hadn’t intended the hard squeeze of my fingers on his shoulders to be a signal, but he took it as such, a silent plea to go faster. The pleasure he was causing – already intense, bordering on insane – increased, until I was nothing but a wanting, wanton creature beneath him.

I felt his hands at my neck. When I pried my eyes open (only now aware that they had closed) the expression on his flushed, sweating face was animalistic, his lip drawn back in a snarl that was both powerfully arousing and impossibly frightening. His fingers closed on my throat, the pressure uncomfortable but not unbearable. Not enough – yet – to stop my breathing.

Was this it? Was this the moment he let his lust for my death override his lust for my body? It would be a beautiful end, I had no doubt; slain at the height of passion, his act the final crescendo of our love-making. 

“What will you do?” he growled, digging his fingers deeper. Now it was uncomfortable. “Will you fight me, or let me fuck you?” 

The draw of breath down my throat was impeded. I was dizzy, yet at the same time my pleasure exploded a thousand-fold. Coupled with the obscenity on his lips, it was impossible to do anything other than _feel._

_Feel_ as he choked me, fingertips hard against my throat.

_Feel_ as he drove into me; deep, hard strokes that made me reel even though I was flat on my back. 

_Feel_ as he took one hand off my neck long enough to wrap around my cock. The touch was sudden and shocking, so intense my whole body bucked and writhed against him. I came so hard the world whited out around me, a wordless, breathless yell on my lips, fucking against his hand and his cock as I took every single moment of pleasure he chose to give.

He drove deeper inside me, harder, both hands returning to my neck. I couldn’t breathe at all. I didn’t try to fight him, already surrendered to the fatalism of our relationship. If this was how I died, then so be it.

“ _Will._ ” My name was a guttural groan in my ear as his body collapsed against mine. 

His hands finally left my throat. On reflex I took a breath; my throat burned, the life-giving oxygen welcomed despite the way it felt going down. I coughed, some last modicum of manners – or perhaps madness – making me turn my face away so that I didn’t cough over him. The heat emanating from his sweat-slickened body was incredible.

Reality began to reassert itself. I let my exhausted legs drop back to the bed, wincing as the tense muscles threatened to cramp. Hannibal rolled away from me, the sharp sting as he withdrew enough to make me yelp. He took a few seconds to clean himself – removing the condom, wiping himself down with a towel folded on the night-stand – before returning, one hand cupping my face.

“Did I hurt you?”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. He may or may not have just tried to kill me (I wasn’t sure even he knew exactly which) but he was concerned with after-care?

“A little,” I replied. 

“Then I am sorry.” He kissed my cheek, my chin, before sliding his tongue along my throat. Both lascivious and solicitous in equal measure. “You are beautiful.”

I cupped the back of his neck, holding his gaze before drawing him down for a long, slow kiss. I was aware of sweat drying on my skin, of the sticky pull of my own come splattered across my belly, of the wild scent of sex. The faint swell of bruised flesh around my neck.

“Is this love, Hannibal?” I asked. “Or some dark obsession? A compulsion that drives us to ends unknown?”

His smile was lop-sided. “That _is_ love.”

THE END


End file.
